


Neutralize

by Mertiya



Series: 450 nm vs 750 nm [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Graduate School, This will make all the safety officers cringe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 05:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7745239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Overworked graduate students aren't always the best at remembering their safety precautions, but sometimes laboratory accidents have unexpected benefits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neutralize

**Author's Note:**

> This probably isn't the best fic I've ever written, but it's been begging to just exist for months at this point, and I've been reading the amazing Saltsanford's stuff, and, well, I just had to finally get this installment out there. Hopefully it is enjoyable!

            “Hey, uh, can I use your guys’s computer?” Wash shuffled a little nervously at the lab entrance. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he really needed to send an email, he wouldn’t have bothered anyone, but the computer labs and the library were closed for the night, and his laptop had chosen right then to shut down and not wake up again.

            The tall young man who was wiping down one of the lab tables looked up and gave Wash the biggest smile he had ever seen grace someone’s face. “Hi!” said the kid. “I am Michael! Who are you?”

            “Caboose, shut _up_!” groaned a sleepy voice from the other side of the lab, and Wash looked over to see another student collapsed over a grotty armchair with a book in his lap and an arm over his face. “Jesus, I’m trying to sleep.”

            “ _Sorry_ ,” hissed Michael, in what had to be the single loudest whisper Wash had ever heard. The other student swore again, fumbled with the chair behind him, pulled out a pillow, and jammed it down over his head.

            “Uh…” said Washington.

            “ _Church is kind of a grouch_ ,” Michael stage-whispered, and Wash took half a step back as the name tugged at the painful memories that he tried desperately to keep under lock and key. It was a common name, he told himself sternly.

            “So, uh, can I use the computer?” he asked again.

            “ _Oh! Yes! Please go ahead and use it! The password is on a sticky note on the front! I kept forgetting it!”_ He’d become, if anything, even louder.

            “CABOOSE! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

            “ _Do you need me to get you some warm milk?”_ Wash watched in fascination as Michael whispered at top volume at the person who had asked him to be quiet. “ _Church has trouble sleeping, sometimes._ ”

            “Oh my _fucking god_.”

            “I’ll just, uh, I’ll just—” Wash sidled into the lab and over toward the computer desk. Sure enough, there was the username and the password. He blinked. “Password3? Really?”

            “ _I always forget the three_ ,” Michael informed him cheerfully.

            “Oh-kay then.” Wash logged on. “Hey, this is pretty nice,” he said in surprise. He’d been expecting something ancient and Windows, but the computer was running Linux 12.04. After a moment, curiosity got the better of him, and he pulled up a terminal and checked the specs. NVIDIA drivers— _recent_ NVIDIA drivers. Terabyte storage, RAID 1 system. “Oh my god,” Wash said weakly. “Hey, Michael, I thought this was an experimental lab? This is a really good computer.”

            “ _I don’t really know about computers._ ”

            “Rrrrgh.” Church emerged briefly from under the pillow. “Professors Flowers is always trying to get someone to do simulations of our shit,” he explained. “Because next door’s got Simmons, and Flowers thinks our papers would be better if we could add some modeling to it, but none of us are good at it.”

            “You’re looking for someone to do simulations? What kind?”

            “Can this wait?” Church asked plaintively. “If you’re good at that shit, go talk to Flowers, he’ll probably fall all over you.”

            _I could do this_ , Wash thought wildly. _I could really do this_. _It’s not a bio lab, but I bet I could use some of the same stuff. Modify my thesis a little, just…get it fucking_ done _._ It was the first time he’d felt anything approaching hope in something like six months.

            Which was, of course, when he looked up to see something red blinking in the fume hood. Wash frowned. He’d only worked in a wet lab once, and only for a single semester in undergrad, but red blinky lights were generally not a great sign. “Hey, Michael?” he said again. The other man looked up from the table he was cleaning. “Is that light supposed to be on?”

            “ _I am not allowed to work with the fume hood_ ,” Michael informed him. Just as Wash was thinking, _yeah, that might be a good idea_ , he continued, “ _I am an undergraduate. Only graduate students can touch the burny things._ ”

            Wash had to grin at that. Still, he didn’t like the blinking red light. Getting up slowly, he hovered in the center of the floor. He probably shouldn’t go over to the fume hood himself, since he wasn’t safety trained for this lab. “Church?” he said uncertainly.

            “Oh my fucking god, please, just kill me,” moaned the other student from under the pillow.

            “No, I think there might be something—”

            He never knew afterwards if he consciously realized what was happening before he moved, or if his body reacted before his brain caught up. Either way, as the red light blinked slowly off and then bloomed into a white-hot explosion, he was already leaping forward, taking Michael around the waist and tackling him to the ground, one hand going out to grab a stool and drag it over them, trying to shield them from the worst of the blast. There was a roaring sound, heat washing over them, and he felt hot liquid splatter across his back and shoulders.

            For one long moment, the world was gone, nothing but a terrifying inferno of noise and heat, and then he was on his hands and knees over Michael, gasping and trying to decide if he was in pain, liquid trickling down his back and arms.

            “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, _fuck_!” Church. Sounded all right. That was good.

            “Michael,” Wash gritted out, because yes, there was definitely some pain now, shooting through his hands and knees, washing across his back. “Are you all right?”

            “I think so,” the undergraduate said doubtfully. “Why are we lying on the ground?”

            “Oh fuck, that was the hydrofluoric acid waste!” Church’s voice was high-pitched and climbing higher.

            Liquid on his back. Wash’s stomach lurched and dropped into his shoes. There were noises at the door now, more voices. “C’mere, get your shirt off. Get everything off. Get under the shower, I’ll get the calcium gluconate.”

            Wash wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this level of bone-chillingly terrified. It was like being dipped into a vat of liquid nitrogen, his breath seizing up, and yet somehow, his hands were still moving, stripping off his shirt, trousers, better take off his boxers as well. It should be embarrassing, but it wasn’t. “There’s the shower, go go go—” Church’s hands shoving at his chest. “Caboose, you too.”

            And there was water pouring down on him, Michael standing in front of him, saying something that Wash couldn’t process. The sound of footsteps.

            “Oh my god, what happened—” A new voice, two new voices. Church was saying something about calling an ambulance.

            “I-I can c-call 911.”

            “Thanks, Simmons.”

            “Church, you get Caboose out of here, I’ll take—who the fuck even is this?”

            There was a sudden silence. “I don’t know his name,” Church said after a minute. “But he took most of the splash. We need to get the calcium gluconate gel right now, and I can’t—I don’t know where—I should, I _should_ know.”

            “You’re fucking right you should, I’ll get it.”

            Another few minutes passed. Wash was trying to process the fact that he was now standing naked under an emergency shower and was probably going to die horribly of HF exposure, but it was too damn surreal for him to take in properly. Everything around him seemed dim and muted. “Okay,” said one of the new voices, and this time he managed to blink through the water and process the face in front of him. Dark skin, dreadlocks pulled back out of his eyes, something familiar about the facial structure. “Come out, we’re gonna put this on you, and then we’re gonna get you to the hospital. Church, where’d he get hit?”

            “I—I don’t know. Fuck, I’m sorry, I haven’t slept in—”

            “Okay. Hey, man, can you talk to me? What’s your name?”

            It took a minute for Wash to realize he was being spoken to. He still had that strange feeling of being walled off from the rest of the world. As if nothing was real, as if he was a stranger piloting his own body. Oh, fuck. He was derealizing. It hadn’t happened in a few years, and he’d thought he was doing better, but now there was no Maine to say his name and anchor him. He shook his head, blinking. Someone had asked a question. “What?” he managed to ask, but it was so hard to move his lips, as if he was a puppeteer who had dropped the strings to his own body.

            “Your name? Hey, listen, I gotta put this on you. Do you know where you got hit?” The other man was holding up something a little like a toothpaste tube. _Calgonate_ , Wash read.

            This question was easier, for some reason. “My back. Shoulders and back, maybe neck.”

            “Okay, I’ll just put it all over. Simmons is calling 911, okay?”

            “Yeah. Okay.” Hands on his back, and that made Wash want to flinch away. It didn’t hurt, though, and that was worse, because if it’d hurt, at least he’d _know_ if he was injured, but with hydrofluoric acid, it could go either way. Fuck. He was trembling, wasn’t he? “Wait,” he said, even though it was way too late to be thinking of this. “Aren’t you exposing yourself now, too?”

            “Doubt it, you’ve been under there for ages, and I’m getting this stuff all over my hands anyway.”

            Wash tried to make a mental note to make sure the other man got himself checked out at the hospital as well, but it was still hard to concentrate.

            “They’ll be here soon,” said another voice, and he looked up to see a nervous-looking man in jeans and a red t-shirt. “We should evacuate the building.”

            “Oh, yeah, I guess we shouldn’t stay here, huh. Church, is Caboose doing okay?”

            “He’s just confused. I don’t think there was much on him, but if—if it hadn’t been for—” Church’s voice was shaking. “Fuck, he was cleaning the tables, he’d have gotten the whole splash and the explosion right in the back.”

            “What happened?”

            “New guy tackled him, got them both of out of the way, I think?”

            “That’s right,” Wash put in. His head seemed to be coming back together a little now. “I’ve got army training. Lucky.”

            The man rubbing gel into his back grinned at him. “You know, normally I like a little more foreplay than this. What about you?”

            “Oh, don’t lie, Tucker,” Church said tiredly. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

            “How would _you_ know?”

            Wash found a surprised chuckle worming its way out of his throat. “You’re—Tucker? You’re also working in this lab?”

            “Yup. Blue lab all the way, baby. I’m the hot one, Caboose is the dumb undergrad, and Church is the asshole.”

            “Oh, shut up, prick.”

            “See? C’mon, we need to get outside.”

            “I’m naked,” Wash pointed out, a little stupidly.

            “I don’t think the paramedics will care, dude.” Tucker paused for a minute. “Maybe take my sweatshirt so you don’t freeze, though.” He shrugged off an aqua-colored hoody and held it out to Wash, who stared at it, then managed to reach out.

            “It’ll be ruined,” he pointed out awkwardly.

            “I’ve got dozens,” Tucker answered cheerfully.

            “He never wears anything else,” Church sighed.

            “Hey, asshole, you never change out of that stupid sweater either.”

            The bickering was—it was good. It was grounding. He was starting to feel as if he fit in his head again, as he reached out and took the sweatshirt and pulled it on. He could work with this, maybe.

            As the group of them started wearily toward the exit, he turned to Tucker and Church. “Wash,” he said. “My—my name’s Wash.”

~

            Being in the hospital was terrifying, boring, and generally unpleasant, all at once. The doctors checked Wash over thoroughly, told him he would have to stay in the hospital for a few days for observation, and redressed the areas that they thought had been exposed to the acid. After that, Wash called the RA to make sure someone would be feeding Sunny, and then, rather mundanely, he was sent to bed.

            Over the next few days, he did develop some nasty burns, but not over as large an area as the doctors had feared, and he didn’t display any of the symptoms of HF poisoning, which meant that everything took on a vaguely anticlimactic quality. In the end, it looked as if he’d only have to miss a week or two of work.

            Every single member of Flowers’ lab, including the professor himself, came into check on him, and when Wash mentioned he was looking for an assistantship along with his qualifications, Flowers practically fell over himself to offer him a spot. Wash tried not to be pathetically grateful, but he wasn’t sure he quite managed it.

            Michael—who was apparently called Caboose by everyone in the lab, because for some reason they all went by their last names—had miraculously escaped totally unscathed, and he thanked Wash about thirty times over, although Wash wasn’t sure he’d entirely grasped how badly he could have been hurt. Mostly, he seemed to be thanking Wash for him not having to stay in the hospital for too long, either because it was “boring” (oh, god, was it ever) or because his sisters would have worried. Possibly both. Wash’s biggest problem right now seemed to be exhaustion, and he kept slipping off to sleep at inopportune times.

            The weirdest moment he had was when he woke up to find Church waiting patiently beside his bed. The other graduate student was wearing a ratty blue sweater and jeans, and even so, he looked hauntingly familiar, so familiar that Wash felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and for a moment thought he was back in his old lab with Leonard staring accusatorily at him.

            “Hey,” Church said awkwardly. “So, uh, are you feeling okay?”

            Trying to disguise the knot twisting in the pit of his stomach, Wash nodded slowly.

            “I haven’t had a chance to thank you properly,” Church said in a wobbly voice. “Caboose—yeah, he’s one of the most important people in my life—and I don’t know what I would’ve—fuck.” He waved a hand at Wash. “Sorry. I’m not good at this. Thanks, though. Like, seriously. Thanks.”

            “You’re welcome.” Wash managed a smile. “I don’t want to have to do that again, but I’m glad it worked out.”

            “So, uh…” Church shuffled nervously. “Ah, god, so the thing is, I kind of know who you are?”

            “What do you mean, you know who I am?” Again, that twisting, sinking feeling in his gut.

            “My uncle is your ex PI,” Church explained helplessly. “And, for the record? He’s an _asshole_. Whole family hates him. You were totally in the right, dude.”

            It was like being punched in the stomach. The Thing that Wash had spent months trying not to think about, the reason he should’ve been finishing up his thesis but instead was struggling to find a lab and keep it together, the leaking wound under the bandaid of just ignoring shit—Church had just up and ripped it open. Wash found that he’d made a soft, injured noise, as if someone had hit him so hard he couldn’t even gasp with the pain of it.

            “Oh, fuck, are you crying? Jesus, no, I didn’t mean—”

            “I’m not crying,” Wash told him, which he suspected was a lie, but he honestly could not tell, because he was suddenly very far away from his body again, and his face was weirdly numb.

            “No, look, I was just explaining how it was easy for people to contact me, I was just setting up to—ah, Christ, I’m fucking this up. Just give me a minute, okay?”

            Wash was rather proud of himself for managing to respond with, “sure” in a voice that didn’t seem to be shaking. Church got up and went over to the door, where he spoke in a low voice to someone outside for a few minutes, and then he opened it and stepped aside.

            A large shadow hovered in the doorway for a long minute, and then stepped into the room. Wash stared in disbelief at the broad-shouldered man who stood on the other side of the room, hands loose at his sides, the customary scowl on his face melting into something like confusion, like relief. “Maine?” Wash croaked. “Oh, my god.”

            _I’m sorry_. Maine’s hands moved slowly, so that Wash, whose sign language was rusty by now, could follow. _Are you all right?_

            “Um, yeah, I think so?” Wash answered automatically; it was becoming difficult for him to swallow or speak.

            _Dammit_. And now Maine was across the room, ignoring the chair beside the bed and kneeling beside it instead. He took Wash’s hand and just held it, as if considering. _I’m so sorry, Wash._

            Something felt as if it had snapped inside Wash’s chest. “You _knew_ I had to, I couldn’t—couldn’t cover it up—” The words tore out of his throat, the justification rising to his lips even though he wasn’t sure if he believed himself or not.

            _Yeah,_ Maine said. _Should have listened to you._ He sighed, his lips twitching to the side.

“Why didn’t you answer any of my texts?” Wash demanded. “If you—if you _knew_ —if you thought that—how could you—”

            Maine pulled a face. _Ashamed._

“What about the others? Are they all angry, or are they _ashamed_ as well?” Wash knew he sounded bitter, but he couldn’t stop himself. He hadn’t heard from a single member of his old lab since the day he’d walked in and told them he thought that the Director—that Leonard—was responsible for Connie’s expulsion. That she’d found several glaring errors in the procedures they had been using for the portions of their experiments that dealt with human subjects and that when she went to Leonard—to her _advisor_ —with her concerns, he’d gotten her thrown out of school rather than correcting them. The thought of Connie made Wash’s stomach flop and turn over, and he had to fight the nausea welling up in his stomach

            _Don’t know. Haven’t talked to them._ Maine’s shoulders slumped. _You want me to leave?_

The hollow feeling in his chest expanded. “No,” Wash told him. “No, I don’t want you to l-leave, I never wanted you to leave, I’ve fucking hated myself and questioned myself and half-killed myself for six months, and you’re the first person who’s said anything _approaching_ the idea that it wasn’t my fault.”

            _Jesus Christ, Wash. Of course it wasn’t your fault_.

            Wash closed his eyes and exhaled very slowly, leaning back against the pillows. Something that was almost calm bubbled up in his stomach. “I should’ve listened to Connie earlier,” he mumbled.

            _We all should’ve_. _Wash, Connie wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not even Leonard’s._ At one level, Wash knew that was true. None of them could have foreseen the car accident—but she’d never have been on the freeway at all if she’d still been in school. He pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes. “I just…”

            Maine reached up and squeezed his wrist reassuringly, and Wash looked down to see him signing, _I’d give you a hug, but I don’t want to crush you_. He had to smile at that. Same old Maine.

            “You couldn’t anyway,” he managed, blinking through the blurry haze in front of his eyes. “No hugs until my back is healed. Doctor’s orders.”

            _You need hugs,_ Maine signed sternly. _Quit getting yourself hurt._

“Hey, it’s not my fault someone needed to be rescued.”

            Maine sighed heavily. _Course not. Idiot_. He still hadn’t let go of Wash’s wrist. For a few minutes, they just stayed like that, Wash still not quite able to believe his friend was actually _here_.

            Of course, Maine couldn’t stay all night. The nurse came in and informed them that visiting hours were ending, but Maine made sure he had Wash’s cell phone number and promised to text him and come back the next day. For the first time in a very long time, when Wash closed his eyes to go to sleep, he felt like smiling. Maybe, he thought, as he slipped into unconsciousness, just maybe, his luck really was turning.


End file.
